Sound of the Sacred Beads: A Poet’s Journey into India has been described as “an exciting ‘adventure in spiritual tourism’ with the peripatetic range of Jack Keroac, the verbal fireworks of Allen Ginsberg, and the wit of Mark Twain.” Based on eight winters in India, over thirty years of meditation, and a lifetime of inner and outer searching, “Susan Klauber’s beautiful words take the reader on a rich and often humorous journey through a land of wonder, magic and madness.”

Her poet’s eye to detail and subtlety unravels India in an engaging sequence of prose and poetry that “reads like an original memoir/novel” through the raw exterior of India’s radically different culture into its spiritual heart. Confronted by the chaotic “swarm of flesh and traffic layered into the atmosphere,” beggars, poverty, and the hardships of many women’s lives, she is warmly welcomed with the unique candor, acceptance and curiosity of the Indian people. The naturalness of their spirituality draws Susan into her own inner “dialogue with destiny,” which is at once humorous and penetrating.

Her personal journey mirrors the universal journey of self to find balance between the individual boundaries of her Canadian/American conditioning and the “boundless, all-inclusive body” of India that encompasses all as family. From an initial sense of India and its people, the journey she takes with her American husband takes on the “Footsteps of a Pilgrim” to holy places and temples, both famous and obscure. Susan’s incisive and colorful stories are prompts for the deeper questions India demands of her. “What is God to me anyway?” surprises her already spiritual mindset. Exploring “Beyond the Transitory,” she narrates visits to saints and holy people that re-open and redefine her view of the divine in human life.

Susan’s insights and wit reveal the deeper “joy and understanding of self it takes to write a work” as complex and yet simple as India itself. The mystery of India’s Vedic wisdom, upheld for millennia by her great sages and masters, lures seekers of universal truths. Susan Klauber “has distilled the essence of mystery as no other.”